Women's Enlightenment Quotes
Posted on Aug 29th, 2007
by 
Vanessa
Vanessa
"Women sometimes feel a separation and a confusion about who they are. This is experienced as a core wound of existence. It's a primal feeling that something is off, that something is missing. It creates a torque in your being, and women will try to find relief in many different ways--through relationships, for example, or self-help processes. But this core wound is one of the factors that also drives women to seek spiritual relief or awakening--to discover on a very fundamental level who they are as consciousness. And as women wake up and claim their presence here with the liberation of consciousness as their foundations, they will actually shift the dynamics of the world."
-Linda Groves-Bonder
"Many years ago, I found myself asking Spirit what it would take to save the world. And the answer came clearly and immediately: a lot of enlightened women."
-Lesley Temple-Thurston
Access: Public
December 2007 
& I think you're one of them women.
First thing that comes to my mind is that this feeling of separation (alienation) or confusion about who we might be is probably a human thing, experienced by everyone… but how we respond to it might vary with gender. Then what comes to my mind is a woman thinking deeply about her relationships as a way to sort through everything (seeing myself doing that) and a guy going for control (the remote control, competitiveness, whatever) and then after that, I was thinking about the way some women will go for control as proof to themselves that they are in control and all is as it should be. I think honest spiritual relationships 'with ourselves' as women is extremely important–how we think about ourselves. Our consciousness. I agree w/ Templeton-Thurston–that can have a HUGE impact on the world. Creating alternative models of the well developed human. One not necessarily in control of the outer world, but an informed and powerful inhabitant of her inner world…
“First thing that comes to my mind is that this feeling of separation (alienation) or confusion about who we might be is probably a human thing, experienced by everyone… but how we respond to it might vary with gender.”
I totally agree with this, and I think it is a really important distinction to make. I too agree that women tend to look for a “cure” for their feelings of separation/alienation by seeking fulfillment in relationships. I think this is really key to look at if we really want to pull ourselves up as women into a new way of relating to ourselves and the world. What comes to mind for me is that we as women can take the gift of our natural relational orientation and broaden the sphere of our care by making our relationship to the Divine the center of our other relationships (the divine here being whatever name works for us: God, Goddess, Allah, Radha, consciousness etc.).
All the great female mystics throughout history have overcome thier obstacles both socially and internally by having a very direct and prioritized relationship to the Divine. I think only by being plugged into that infinite source of love an compassion will we be able to let go of our attachments in other areas of our lives and really offer ourselves to the greater work that needs to be done in the world.
Of coarse, I”m not saying, women shouldn't have relationships on the human level also, only that the priority for me is making our relationship with the Divine the ground for all other relationships in our lives. It is that connection to unconditional love which we often look for and expect in our human partners which I think creates a lot of suffering and a lot of unfair expectations on others.
Yes! Absolutely, I do agree with this inspiration to consciously, mindfully open that movement toward relationship, that very important move in the dance of life that reaches toward the other–to make it a space where the Divine enters and is felt and experienced. This reminds me so much, as an example, of the idea of “whenever two or more are gathered in His name, there is Love!” Just before I came over to read your blog, I was experiencing a personal kind of nadir on the same subject–a kind of counterpoint. I was over reading this blog, which talks about happiness–opening to others and helping others as a basis for happiness. I do believe what bobJuan is writing, and what the others are saying in comment–but there is this intense lonliness as well. And if there are no coincidences–or if everything can inform and deepen our insight of everything else, then my question still is… If I do honestly know these things and live these ideas, then why is lonliness still there?
Obviously I won't presume to have the answers for you on this one… but I could offer something for what it is worth. Often a choice to expand, develop, evolve into wider spaces of consciousness, love, etc., comes with an immense amount of pain and lonliness. For one, because we are stretching past the normal grooves of consciousness in our culture around what is accepted/understood as “relationship” as “love”; we are charting new territory and it is often lonley and difficult to communicate to others. The other is that the more we develop and expand, the more we feel of the world, which includes more suffering as well as more love. We open ourselves more and more to all of it.
Hey Vanessa .. great quotes.. and great dialogue. I absolutely agree.
I’d like to use that second quote - can you give me a reference for it?
love.
Both quotes are from the latest issue of “What is Enlightenment” on Women and Spirituality. They have all these amazing women leaders and teachers making pithy statements throughout the magazine about what enlightenment means for women in the 21st century. There are some other great quotes that you would probably be interested to check out also from feminists and spiritual teachers around the world.